Millennials, Stop Using Business Cards And Do This Instead

I can’t count the amount of times I have gone to events and passed out business cards. Despite wanting to network I never found myself getting real followup from people or actually making real connections or opportunities.

It wasn’t until I adopted a “no card” policy for myself where I decided I would stop representing myself with a 4x2 piece of paper and instead send them to engage with my free content that I started seeing traction.

Here’s why business cards don’t work—today’s consumers are smarter than ever before. 81% of consumers do online research before making a purchase, comparing an average of five competitors for 79 days before they buy.

If there isn’t an easy and quick way for them to get to know you, you will be forgotten.

This week on the Unconventional Life Podcast, I spoke to one woman who has mastered the art of introductions by using her video content to create an impressive client portfolio.

Meet Taryn Southern, a digital strategy consultant with 500k YouTube subscribers and 700M+ video views. She’s also a former TV host and producer for shows on MTV, Vh1, Discovery Channel, and Sirius XM, and an active advisor to the YouTube Creator Board, where she provides critical feedback for Google product teams.

Source: Taryn Southern

Taryn Southern

Southern says the success of her YouTube channel has opened big doors for her professionally. Below, read her tips about creating attention-grabbing content that can help you stand out amongst competition.

Jules Schroeder: What do you recommend for content creators who are just starting out?

Taryn Southern: Look for new platforms that are early in their growth… most people who were early on Snapchat, early on Instagram, early on Vine, they all saw these incredible growth rates. You have to be smart about where you build.

Schroeder: Did you experience success in YouTube early on?

Southern: My first video I posted got almost 2M views. I had no audience but it got 2M views because it was fairly high production quality for back then, it was edgy, but there’s no way it would get that many views today. I am lucky now to get a video that gets 100k views.

Schroeder: What are your biggest tips for creating high-performing content?

Southern: Apply formats to concepts so that people can use the video as a social identifier. One of the first videos that BuzzFeed did in their original content strategy was about why redheads are actually more fun… and you can imagine why it went viral, because every redhead shared it on Facebook. It serves as a perfect social identifier without people actually having to say I’m a redhead and I’m more fun.

I also recommend playing into something that some segment of the population emotionally identifies with. If you take a social issue and tie it to a specific segment of the population you’re hoping to speak to, that’s a very powerful thing. You’re basically saying you need to watch this because you’re a member of this population.

Schroeder: Evolution in your career is integral. At what point did you know it was time to pivot in your YouTube career and how did you take action?

Southern: I started knowing maybe two years ago that I wanted to switch my YouTube content, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it and I was still in a growth phase with my channel and it was too scary to figure it out. Once I reached a plateau and my channel was no longer growing with what I was doing I realized, this is the time. Sometimes it’s not as easy as just switching, sometimes you have to put things out, see how something resonates, get your messaging down like what do I want to say to the world, how do I care to articulate what I care about?

Schroeder: How can content creators keep a success-oriented mindset?

Southern: Keep track of your small wins along the way to know you’re on the right path. If I had just been losing the entire time, I would have probably seen that as a sign that I needed to do something different. Have a startup mentality—if something’s not working, you need to pivot.

Schroeder: What do you believe is the key to living a life that’s aligned?

Southern: To live a life that’s aligned and feels purposeful, you can’t expect to wake up every morning and feel that. It’s going to be hard. I encourage people to not get down by the dips because the dips are an absolutely necessary part of it. Go after the thing that even with the heartaches and the negatives you’re still willing to wake up every morning to do. There’s risk in wanting to wake up and ask, is what I’m doing making me happy? Because if you are constantly saying that every single morning inevitably you’re going to go through a rough period and if that’s your barometer you might quit. I think the question is, can you see yourself doing something else and is the pain worth the gain?

Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life by your own design.